8
UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 8TH MAY, 2016
DCFA VISUAL ARTS EXHIBITION
“T
o the UWI graduates in the audience
tonight,
don’t rest on your laurels. This
is just the beginning. The concepts that
you have presented here today will
plague you for the rest of your lives.”
National Museum Curator Lorraine Johnson’s opening
remarks cast a precarious overtone on the densely packed
crowd. This was the Department of Creative and Festival
Arts (DCFA) Visual Arts Degree Programme Final Year
Exhibition opening ceremony. Friends, family and enthused
arts patrons gathered in the Main Gallery of the National
Museum and Art Gallery on April 13 to observe the works
of 22 Fine Art and 17 Design students who presented the
final progression of their Visual Arts degree portfolio after
receiving peer review, critiques and measured guidance
from their fellow students and lecturers at DCFA.
Organized by Keomi Serrette, Curatorial Assistant
at the National Museum and Art Gallery, the exhibit was
a collaborative effort between the National Museum and
DCFA with Exhibition Curator, Steve Ouditt at the helm
and Lauren Jennings-Stoute being an instrumental figure in
the Exhibition Committee.
Fitting the range of issues addressed by the students
neatly under one umbrella would be impossible as students
explored everything, from the cultural preservation of
Amerindian art to child sexual abuse and other difficult
topics. Lecturer Steve Ouditt sees this as the contemporary
way forward for artists: confronting social concerns and
solutions.
“What we’re doing is giving students a chance to
experiment with all of these ideas in their social space. Even
going back in history, we would always see interventions
and social projects have always been mediated by artists and
the ways in which people come to understand a social space
and system.”
Fine art student, Oswald Jr Dupigny’s Untitled
piece provides a clear depiction of the way in which the
education system shapes our social consciousness based on
the privileging of academia over vocational abilities. The
two collide in a flaming red classroom filled with school
desks and sewing machines. Dupigny credits the secure
foundation DCFA provided to help him get to this point,
“The programme has helped me mature and I take my craft
seriously now and I’ve come to know what I’m about in
terms of my art making, process, studio etc.”
Helping students find their niche was a recurring
theme among the students interviewed, including Design
student Melissa Miller, whose Herban – an urban herb
garden system encourages sustainability in a practical
solution for busy city professionals who don’t have the time
to maintain an entire garden.
“With design and art, you really have to have a passion
for whatever you’re doing and it’s okay to have a specific
niche... it can be overwhelming at first since we’re exposed
to so much in the beginning, but once you keep working on
your own skill, you can decide what niche works best for
you.”
Sometimes your niche ends up miles away from where
you started according to Shanice Smith, conceptual fine arts
student.
“I came into the programme with the intention of
learning to paint and draw and I disliked contemporary
art sooo much,” she said. “Only in my second year, I
started reflecting and trying to open up about things and
find a middle ground or safe space. I’ve learnt more about
contemporary art since then and I realized that it is relevant
to the times we live in and the objectification of women IS
very much relevant.”
Smith’s piece, Nice ting does be in glass case is part of
a body of work investigating gender-based issues faced by
females, specifically the objectification and the role of the
media. When confronted with the plethora of uncovered
breasts in the piece, museum onlookers’ reactions
vacillated from thoughtfully glancing back and forth between the description and
the piece to understand it to raised eyebrows and spontaneous trini bemusement,
“Weeyyyysssss.”
Undoubtedly, the piece sparked conversation and intrigue by all in attendance.
The chasm between the artists’ intentions and the audience’s interpretation
remains a space that both challenges and excites both parties. Does good art always
transmit a clear meaning or is it meant to simply provoke the viewer? Also, how do
we cultivate artists of this calibre? According to Lauren Jennings-Stoute, the students
at this exhibit pulled of such a feat because they were self-motivated and had the
drive to present and promote a unique show that was of the highest standard. This is
in spite of budgetary constraints and other setbacks.
Director of the DCFA, Jessel Murray, makes no secret of the need for DCFA to
have its own space and spoke about the University’s plans to house a new expanded
space at Cheeseman Avenue, St. Augustine in 2017. In the interim, students like
Lauren Jennings-Stoute were happy to showcase their work in a prominent venue
like the National Museum, but also saw the need for DCFA to develop more
strategically in keeping with national policy for a competitive advantage in the
creative arts. Similarly Steve Ouditt saw the example of Havana Cuba, as a prototype
for how Trinidad could continue creating cutting-edge art, design and music despite
economic challenges.
Overall, any initial connotations of amateur, apprentice-like work proved
to be a misnomer as students punched way above their weight, whether through
combining principles of design and horticulture for therapy methodology in the
case of Ryan Huggins, Holographic Entrypoint (Bromeliads) or investigating the
theory that all things will eventually become different versions of themselves in
Wasia Ward’s Red Yellow Blue. In Ward’s words, “The graduating class challenged
the stereotype of what art could be and got audience to see their installations as ‘real
art.’”
The opening indeed was a night of triumph, spectacle and celebration. But the
work of the artist remains to be continued…
The End is
THE
Student art challenges
B Y J E A N E T T E A W
Jeanette G. Awai is a freelance writer and a Marketing and Communication
The UWI DCFA Visual Arts Degree Programme Exhibition runs until May 14 at the National Museum and Art Gallery, Port of Spai
